By Jennifer Jeffrey

M and I are in the twenty-third minute of our ritual morning phone call when she has a meltdown. "I can't deal with this stress anymore," she announces. "Can. Not. Deal." She had a particularly frustrating week; a potential client backed out, and another project was put on hold. "Why," she sighs, "do other people get all the lucky breaks, while I work my ass off for next to nothing?"

Why, indeed. It seems that everyone I know has been infected with an internal crisis of late; a virus of doom is sweeping over the general populace, oddly in sync with a certain color-coded alert system.

M is not comforted to know that others share her misery, and it soon becomes clear that the telephone is inadequate in the face of personal crisis. We've got to hash out these issues face to face. Naturally, I propose dinner at my apartment. After we hang up, I page through The Babbo Cookbook to find a suitable main dish. I've never been inside any of Mario Batali's New York restaurants, but this book is surely the next best thing. The glossy photos are mesmerizing, but Mario's prose is what captures my heart.

"The tangy flavor of sorrel," he rhapsodizes, "is like a spring tonic to my palette." And you, Mario, are like a ginger haired bard in the amphitheater of my mind. Talk braising to me, baby!

I've mostly given up pasta (simple carbohydrates! bad!), but he makes those oddly shaped bits of flour and water and salt sound so luscious that I'm itching to pull out my large stock pan and get the water boiling for a slithery heap of al dente noodles. It just so happens that I have a vacuum-sealed bag of hand rolled fettuccine in the cupboard, looking rustic enough beneath the plastic. Not the moist, dense ribbons of freshly cut parpardelle or fazzoletti that Mario has at his disposal, but it will do.

I settle on a recipe for boar sausage ragu (p.67), though I'll be substituting a spicy Italian sausage in place of the harder-to-find boar. I haven't the slightest idea where I could find such a thing near my apartment, and I'm not in the mood to hunt for it. The best part of being Mario must be the posse of special helpers at his beck and call: The pasta maker. The salad tosser. The boar-sausage-finder. He thinks of a brilliant dish and - wazzah! - the all-star team springs into action. I wouldn't mind being one of his minions. I flip through the cookbook for a few moments, noting the crimson blush of a lobster claw, the crispy edge of a calf's liver, the shapely curve of a fiddlehead fern. Mario's hands, clenching the handle of a saucepan, are strong and damp. Sigh.

The ragu has to be reduced for more than an hour over low heat, and sans a posse of my own, I begin preparing it before M arrives. I haul out my heavy cast iron skillet and toss in the sausage. The meat sizzles and spits, propelling microscopic nuggets of fat onto my exposed arm. Ouch. When it is crispy and brown all over, I remove it from the pan and replace it with a heap of finely chopped onions and garlic and fennel and celery.

Mario's ragu calls for carrot, but I loathe sweet, mushy carrots; hence the fennel. I feel strangely proud of this clever switcheroo. I sauté the vegetables over medium heat until they sag and soften around the edges, then add the requisite two cups of dry white wine, a large can of whole tomatoes and a cup of chicken stock. I toss in a handful of chopped herbs to finish it off: the sage Mario recommends, along with the Italian parsley and tarragon that were languishing in my refrigerator. It is a crime, I firmly believe, to let fresh herbs wither and die. There. I return the sausage to the pan, reduce the heat and stick the lid on. With no additional work on my part, the flavors will mingle and condense into a rich, decadent broth, and make my apartment smell divine in the bargain.

M arrives, gorgeous as always; her glossy brown hair looks like an ad for expensive conditioner. Her body language, however, shouts defeat. Her smile is pained, and she curls up on the mini sofa in the dining nook and watches with glazed eyes as I pull the spinach out of the refrigerator. I'm not sure what to say, so I just chop and wait for her to speak. The salad takes minutes to assemble: a heap of organic baby spinach goes in to the bowl, along with thin rings of fennel, cherry tomato halves, scallions, crumbly nubs of aged Parmesan, a few jagged bits of shaved proscuitto, a handful of pine nuts, a splash of olive oil and the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon. A hearty shake of salt and pepper. Easy as 1-2-3.

It is finally time to open up the wine. I have a lovely bottle of 2000 Sanford Pinot Noir, so we'll drink well, in spite of the need to economize. We toast to better days. "To happiness," I say, managing to sound both sappy and insensitive at the same time. The wine is heavenly, with notes dried fruit and dark chocolate, which helps to amend for my lameness. As we tear into deep bowls of spinach salad, M begins to unload.

"I just wish things were a little easier. I wish I wouldn't have to stress out about rent for a few months in a row. I wish every single decision didn't revolve around money or the need to find more clients." Her fork hangs mid-air for a moment. "I’m so exhausted." We discuss the struggle to make it without a corporate safety net or a 401K. When the dot-com bubble burst two years ago, M remained in high technology. I fled. Different paths, and yet neither of us are seeing dramatically different results. We stare at each other with glum faces, stuck in a funk.

Suddenly, I remember the ragu. A peek beneath the lid releases a fragrant cloud of steam, a bouquet of fennel and garlic and wine. The simmering mass has diminished significantly; now would be a good time to start the water for the pasta. I fill up my largest stock pan with water and heat it to boiling, then toss in the fettuccine with a dash of salt and a splash of oil. A few minutes, and the noodles are done. I spoon the pasta into deep stoneware bowls and ladle a generous portion of the dense sauce over the top. I have a wedge of Parmesan left over from the salad, and decide to shave it over the top, though it doesn't strictly need it. The dish looks nothing like the picture in Mario's cookbook, but I've had too much wine to care.

I hand M her bowl, and then sit down with mine, balancing it on my lap. We are each armed with a fork and a spoon, in order to mediate the pasta-broth balance. Elbows askance, I maneuver the first bite into my mouth: the flavors are peppery and sweet and tomato-ey all at once. The strips of fettuccine are tender with just the slightest chewy pull at the center. Bits of brownish onion and garlic cling to the lumps of sausage. The fennel and celery are pleasantly firm.

The mouth feel, as Mario might say, is multi-textured and comforting, the equivalent of snuggling inside of a nubbly knitted blanket on a cold night. M and I are silent for a moment, lifting forkfuls up to our mouths and chewing in unison. We nod. We sigh. As the sugars work their way into our bloodstream, the tone of our conversation changes perceptibly.

"Nothing is perfect," M says, with a sudden smile, "but sometimes I do feel downright lucky." She lowers her voice to a near whisper, as if there were people nearby to overhear. "I mean, despite all my complaining, I am pursuing my dream. I work on my business, as small as it is. I’m meeting the people I’ve always wanted to meet. They take my calls and tell me what they’ve learned. So I only have five bucks in my wallet, but isn't that just temporary?"

I bob my head up and down. Yes! This is better than the dismal litany of the last hour. "I feel the same way," I venture, feeling a bubble of hope inside my chest. "So I can't buy clothes, but I write for a living! It sounds ridiculous to say it, but I manage to pay the rent every month. Somehow that seems remarkable." And it does, until I compare myself to other, more successful people, but I temporarily forget about them.

We fall silent for a moment, contemplating our newly recognized fortune. I look at the smart, kind woman sitting across from me, and think: life is good. And all at once I know why Mario does what he does every day, why he labors in the kitchen and writes tender, loving testaments to the beauty of pasta and octopus and heirloom tomatoes: because food brings us back to a realization of the simple things that make us happy. A little flour and water and salt aren't much, but then again, they are.

Code Orange be damned.